


Crying

by shutendouji



Category: Numenera (Roleplaying Game)
Genre: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/F, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Original Character(s), Original Player Characters, Sad
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-05
Updated: 2016-05-05
Packaged: 2018-06-06 13:05:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,660
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6755188
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shutendouji/pseuds/shutendouji
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Pollis, an Augur with an attitude, tries to help her human friend when she is sad.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Crying

**Author's Note:**

> A/N: Here’s my terrible Numenera fanfiction that came to me in a dream. Pollis is my PC (Augur Jack who Plays with Fire, a sort of variant of Bears a Halo), and Kyrien is my wife’s (all I know is that she’s a Strong-Willed Jack). I kinda ship them, but it’s pretty one-sided. I had a dream about Pollis’ awkward Augur ass trying to comfort Kyrien, so this is what happened.
> 
> Story under the cut! You don’t really need to know anything about Numenera to enjoy this aside from it takes place a billion years in the future and the setting is kinda like 1000 AD feat. technology.

Kyrien was a woman on a mission.

Normally when we stopped at markets, she would stop and look at all the little trinkets they offered, holding them in her hands with childlike wonder, watching them gleam in the sunlight before rummaging around to see if she had enough shins to see what it did. She liked to eat, too, and markets were full of fresh food. But today, she hadn’t stopped in any of the stalls. She walked as quickly as her long legs would carry her, hands clenched into fist. Normally, I’m pretty fast, but I had to almost run to keep up with her.

“What are you looking for?” I asked. “You on some sort of kill mission? Should I go into stealth mode?”

“Don’t be stupid,” she snapped. “I’m sorry,” she added hastily, waving her hand at my general direction. “You’re not stupid. I’m just not really feeling like myself today.”

“Are you sick? We can stop somewhere if you need to.”

She stopped. The momentum caused me to almost fall on my face, but I held my arms out to keep my balance. “I could go for a drink,” she said carefully.

“That’s good. That’s a start. You just need some liquor to set you straight. Alright!”

“I’m gonna take a seat here,” she said. “Could you go get me something to drink?”

“Of course. What would you like?”

She pondered that for a moment, scratching her head idylly. “The strongest drink you can find.”

I grinned. “Challenge accepted!”

Have I mentioned that I love markets? They’re somehow reminiscent of Raak Vuol, my hometown, only slower paced, with less tech. It took me a while to get used to the pacing of the outside world, but now that I’m used to it, I’m quite fond of it. Even so, people here are pushing around, children running through the streets screaming, thieves sneaking up on unsuspecting travelers to pickpocket them. It’s the sort of excitement I crave. So needless to say, I was thrilled to be on an alcohol mission for Kyrien. I was a bit worried about her, though. She did seem rather off-color.

Worry began to set off little sparks on my hands, so I picked a stall, paid for a bottle to share with her, and hurried back to the bench she was sitting on. When I found her, she was staring so intently off into space that I thought she was trying to blow up a few stalls with her mind. She’s pretty powerful for a human. I wouldn’t put it past her to be able to.

“Uhh…you okay?”

Kyrien snapped out of her daze. “Give me that.” She snatched the bottle out of my hands, tore off the cap with her teeth, and inhaled.

“How is it?” I asked, eager for a sip.

She pulled back and handed me the bottle, coughing until she wheezed. “Tastes like my heart being ripped out of my chest.”

“Sounds brutal.” I dared a sip. It was warm and sweet. A powerful burn danced over my tongue and down my throat as I swallowed, making me wince, eyes watering.

“Quite.” Kyrien leaned forward. I thought she was gonna hurl, but instead, she buried her face in her hands.

“Are you sure you’re okay? We can find somewhere to stay for the day if you need to. We could just kick back and relax. We’ve been traveling for a long time.”

She didn’t say anything in response. Instead, my question was met with the most heart-wrenching sobs I had ever heard in my life.

“…Kyrien?”

She continued sobbing, increasing in volume, her shoulders shaking with the force of her cries.

“What the shit?” I asked. I didn’t mean to be rude, but I really had no idea what was going on. I dug around for the cap to the bottle so I wouldn’t waste any of our alcohol.

Her cries were gathering the attention of many market-goers, who were starting to crowd around the bench, murmuring about whether or not she was okay.

“She’s fine. Go home,” I said, shooing them away.

“They’re all looking at me!” she sobbed, coughing until she gagged.

“It’s okay, dude. You’ll be old news in just a second.”

Somehow, that made her sob even louder. “Old news!” she wailed, her breathing erratic.

I looked around frantically for anything that would make her stop crying. I showed her various oddities, even cyphers, things that would normally pique her interest, but all she did was cry and say it was all pointless. I got so desperate, I stole someone’s small pet thuman and plopped him in her lap.

She did cease crying for a moment. She looked at the thuman, stroked him for a moment, and then burst into tears again. “He’s too cute!”

“But isn’t that a good thing?” I asked.

“No! He’s so cute an innocent and he’s gonna die!” She hiccupped, as if to prove her point. “Just look at his little _face_! He doesn’t know anything!”

The thuman looked up at her and whimpered. He sure as shit didn’t know what to do for her, so he eventually climbed off of her lap and curled up next to her, a reassuring paw on her leg.

My heart sank into my stomach. I didn’t know what to do. If a _thuman_ wouldn’t cheer her up, then what would? Now she was crying and murmuring to herself, something unintelligible about failure. It was so sad, I felt as though I needed to cry with her. But I had to remain strong. She needed me.

Suddenly, I had an idea. A bold, stupid idea that would probably get my ass killed, but something I’d try anyway. I swallowed, trying to suppress the sparks in my palms, and I went for it.

I embraced her.

She froze, probably unsure of what to do. Because of our height difference, my face was pressed right into her chest, my arms wrapped tightly around her waist. Eventually, I felt her body turn, her strong, much larger arms wrapping around my body, her head resting on top of mine. I felt teardrops rain on my head, but I didn’t mind.

We sat there for what felt like a few moments, but when she pulled back, I noticed that night was beginning to fall. She wiped some stray tears from her face, her breath shuddering.

“Are you alright, Kyrien?”

Slowly, she nodded. “I am now.”

“What’s going on?” I patted her leg in a similar fashion to the thuman.

She chewed her lip in thought. “I really can’t tell you.”

“It’s alright. I know you like to be one of those tall, quiet, and mysterious types…”

“Oh shut up! I will kill you, you know.” She punched my arm lightly, as if to prove how deadly she was. She didn’t do a very good job, because I just laughed.

“I think you secretly like me,” I teased.

She rolled her eyes. “In your dreams. You nerd.”

I studied her tearstained face for a few moments. “Are you sure you’re okay? Because I really am here for you.”

Kyrien sighed. “I really wish I could tell you, Pollis. It’s just…it’s really heavy. And it’s too soon in our relationship.”

A slow, teasing grin spread on my face as an opportunity arose. “Relationship, huh? I thought you protested too…hey!”

She punched me a lot harder this time. “You know that’s not what I meant.”

I stuck my tongue out at her, rubbing my arm gingerly.

She turned away, watching the merchants close up shop for the night. “I just can’t trust you yet. I don’t know what you want.”

I nudged her with my shoulder. “Just your friendship, really. I’m a woman of simple pleasures.”

She gave me a deadpan look. “Pleasures. I know that much.”

“It’s okay to like sex, Kyrien.”

“I know it is!” she said a little too quickly. She cleared her throat. “Whatever. The point is that I can’t tell you everything…or really much of anything about me yet. Until I know I can trust you.”

“And what can I do to prove that to you?”

She hesitated. “Time. Time will show me.”

I nodded. “That’s fair. So what now?”

We watched as a merchant chased down her kids, screaming at them to spit out whatever was in their mouths. All I could think was how badly I didn’t want kids.

“Let’s find an inn to stay in for the night,” Kyrien said after a while. “I’m really tired now.”

I nodded and stood, holding out my hand for her. She took it and stood, head and shoulders towering over me. She seemed a lot less intimidating now that I’d seen a softer side to her. She really was human, after all. The thuman stretched and followed her, tail wagging.

“Hey Kyrien?”

“Hmm?”

I pointed at the thuman. “I think you’ve got a friend.”

She looked at him and smiled. “I guess that is nice.”

We walked in silence toward the inn, the thuman trailing behind Kyrien. Eventually, she spoke again. “Hey Pollis?”

“Yeah?”

“Promise me we’ll never speak of this again.”

I nodded. “Obviously. Things’ll go back to normal now. And eventually, you’ll promise your undying love for me and your lust for smaller women…”

“Oh shut your face,” she hissed, but she was laughing. She tugged one of my ponytails. “You nerd.”

“You’re a nerd. You looked like you were literally gonna orgasm over that one cypher the other day…”

“Didn’t we say we wouldn’t speak of that, either?”

“Doesn’t change that you’re a nerd.”

She puffed her cheeks at me indignantly. “I hate you.”

I grinned. “I hate you too, Kyrien.”

She opened the door to the inn. “Shall we?”

I nodded with a smile and hopped over the threshold. I loved inns almost as much as I loved markets, and I could start all sorts of trouble here...


End file.
